An email conversation with Oleg Shaikhatarov, product manager of Parallels Virtualization Automation, in which he discusses the content of his session “Parallels Virtualization Automation,” which will take place 2:40 p.m. Wednesday, February 4th at the Parallels Summit.
In advance of this year’s Parallels Summit in Las Vegas, we’re contacting some of the speakers presenting at the event and asking them about the content of their sessions in an effort to give readers a sense of what to expect from the event, and perhaps help them choose which sessions to attend.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Managing physical servers and virtualized containers can be a particularly comprehensive task for adminstrators, which holds the potential of anything and everything going wrong.
With his Wednesday session at the Parallels Summit next week, Oleg Shaikhatarov, product manager of Parallels Virtualization Automation will explain how Parallels Virtual Automation 4.5 can help businesses can use Parallels Virtual Automation to automate management of heterogeneous virtualized infrastructure.
The session will also highlight upcoming Parallels Virtualization Automation products, including Parallels Operations Automation, Parallels Business Automation and Parallels Virtual Automation.
Additionally, the company will reveal its long-term strategy of Parallels Automation product line evolution.
Another exciting aspect about this session is that it will give attendees a first look at the soon-to-be-released Parallels Virtual Automation 4.5, which offers transparent support of hypervisor-based and OS-level virtualization technologies.
In an email conversation with the WHIR, Shaikhatarov discusses some of the subjects certain to arise in the session, scheduled for Wednesday, February 4 at 2:40 p.m.
The WHIR: Is the “Parallels Virtualization Automation” described in the session a specific product, a group of products or an architecture principle? There doesn’t seem to be information out there about a specific application called virtual automation.
Oleg Shaikhatarov: Parallels Virtual Automation is a product which was formerly known as Parallels Infrastructure Manager. It was renamed to be inline with the company strategy of combining all our automation products into the “Parallels Automation” portfolio.
We have three automation products now: Parallels Operations Automation enables complete automation of services provisioning and management; Parallels Business Automation enables automation of business functions such as ordering, billing, payment collection and reporting; and Parallels Virtual Automation enables virtual infrastructure management.
Is the session focused more on attracting new users to the product or group of products, or is it designed more for people already using the platform? What are you hoping to get across?
OS: The session is focused on both: existing users of the PIM product as well as potential new users who would benefit from a management panel to administer and manage virtualized infrastructure.
The main focus will be on the upcoming release of Parallels Virtual Automation 4.5 that supports management of Virtual Machines based on a new hypervisor server virtualization product called Parallels Server Bare Metal. A majority of service providers offer Parallels Virtuozzo Containers already, so I will specifically emphasize how easy it would be for them to extend their offerings with Virtual Machine-based services.
The session summary references the product roadmap? How far does that roadmap stretch and what are some of the key points along the way?
OS: I will emphasize a few specific directions of development including support for 3rd-party virtualization technologies and some other improvements such as capacity planning and applications management.
It also promises some insight into the long-term strategy for the Parallels Automation product line. Can you describe that in a little more detail?
OS: Parallels Virtual Automation is currently represented as a stand-alone product, so our strategy is to transform PVA into a pluggable module for Parallels Automation. Our goal is to have all the pieces of Parallels Automation represented as modules within a single automation framework. This way all modules will provide consistent functionality and our customers will have the same experience no matter which pieces of Parallels Automation they use.
You’ll be offering a demo of a software update. Can you describe any of the specific new features you’ll be highlighting in the presentation?
OS: New features will be focused around unified management of Containers and Virtual Machines. This would include provisioning and management of Virtual Machines, unified monitoring and resource usage accounting, and a self-service panel for end-users to manage/recover a particular Virtual Machine. Service Providers can offer Containers and Virtual Machines within the very same concept as we provide the same set of capabilities within the control panels for Containers and Virtual Machines.
